posts tagged: finished!

This pattern has been in my Ravelry favorites for quite some time; I was excited to finally knit it! My cousin and his wife are due in May, and this little “sweatshirt” type sweater was just the thing. The whole front “apron” part is a big pocket!

I dove into my stash and found two remaining skeins of Cascade 220 in this gray. It was exactly the amount I’d need—though I ran so close to the end of the yardage, I didn’t even attempt the crochet edging in the same color. I did make the body slightly longer, as other reviews on Rav indicated it was off proportionally. (I think I added 10 rows.) I cast this on during a KBC retreat weekend in Lancaster, PA, and had finished nearly all of it except for one sleeve by the time I got home. I knit the body in the round to the armholes, then knit both the front and back simultaneously so that it took as little brainpower as possible.

The folding open of the lapels before starting the sailor flap seemed straightforward enough, and I’d read a few Rav posts that warned that this was tricky so I was prepared. I could see it clearly in my mind—I understood what was intended! And yet I got it wrong on the first try anyway. It was an easy enough fix, though I didn’t realize it until I was a few rows in because of the way the piece kept flipping on me. Not a big deal; ripped and restarted.

After knitting on both sleeves, though, I had a moment of crisis: The neck opening was too small, and it did not have a lot of give. I have relatively limited knowledge of babies, but I know they usually have giant noggins. With my mantra of “when in doubt, rip it out” echoing in my head, I laboriously frogged the sleeves, un-Kitchenered the shoulders, undid the sailor flap, and frogged down to the neck split. I decreased a few more times at the neck edge until I felt it was satisfactorily wide. This time, the sailor flap gave me no issues—aided, I think, by the fact that I did not bind off the top of the back on the second go-around. That time I left the stitches live, so I just knit them into the flap.

I wanted a neon yarn to do the edging, but also needed so little I didn’t want to buy a whole ball of neon (and I couldn’t find any neon around the office!). So this spring green made do, but I love the effect even still.

Of course, knitting for a baby due in May means making something for cold weather and then having to wait… and wait… to see them in it! Hopefully the 6-month size I made will be a perfect fit come next fall/winter for little Henry!

After I finished sewing my robe, I had enough fabric leftover to make myself a Scout Tee! (Or, I carefully conserved fabric as I cut the robe so that I could eke out something of substance.) I wear this all the time, I love it! I even wore it on a short business trip a week after I made it, before I’d even taken photos.

Not much more to say about it, as I’m slowly getting better at making them. I cut a lot of bias binding in a white cotton lawn so that I now have it as a go-to for future projects. It’d be so nice to make coordinating or otherwise special bindings, but I find making bias tape to be so tedious, and feels like such a waste of fabric, that I feel satisfied with a small stash of white. Since it isn’t visible anyway, who cares?

As always, I can say I learned a lot in the making of this shirt, the Biscayne Blouse from Hey June. My biggest lesson was not to size something down willy-nilly because you think it’s coming out too big!

For this, I cut a generous size on purpose. But then it seemed impossibly wide so I just winged shaving fabric off the sides. I took off too much, so it’s more snug at the bust than I wanted, and the shoulders are wider than I’d want. (Proving I should’ve just cut a smaller size to get narrower shoulders.) Oh well!

However, I feel pretty damn good about the button placket—that came together very easily and cleanly. I will definitely make this again in a different, less see-through fabric, and cut at a size that will better fit in the shoulders! The pattern was very easy to follow and I executed the sewing in an evening, if memory serves. I wore this pretty often over the summer. It got its debut exploring the coastline in San Diego!

To make your house warmed, you need pleasantly plump pillows, don’t you think?

I’ve always loved this quilt block, just an arrangement of HSTs. (I actually couldn’t find a name for this block—anyone know?) It’s funny how different it looks in a pillow, though, once the pillow is stuffed—more round, less sharp. I quite like the effect. The pillows are fraternal twins in more than one way: I split each HST up so that there is one in each pillow, just arranged differently (except for that center orange! oops!), and I used the same fabric in different colorways to back them.

I love the assortment of colors—on the pillows and on my friend’s couch. Many of those fabrics are beloved, as I’ve used them in many projects over time. They’re stuffed and seamed shut (rather than pocket pillowcases), using stuffing from small Ikea pillows that were about the same size. They’re modest, at just about 12″ square. My friend says that a friend of hers was hugging a pillow while they talked over some rough times, and she said the pillow had good energy. I couldn’t ask for a better compliment.

Apparently I spent this past winter knitting baby/child items that were designed by Purl Soho, because I also decided to knit up a pair of the Arched Gusset Mittens one day, using some fingering-weight yarn that was laying around. Mostly I was looking to learn the construction of the mittens before casting on an adult-sized pair. When the first one was done, it was so cute and had used so little yarn that I made a match.

Looking at them later I simply could not fathom what size child would fit into what I’d made. I just don’t have any concept of the size of children’s hands! But my friend Christy she thought they’d work for her little girl next winter so I happily gave them to her.